Add Module Config to Admin Panel

Been looking for some info for a while, but can't seem to find it. I'm building a site for a client who needs a module for adding available courses, but I can't seem to find any information about adding a new panel to the admin interface.

The two options I'm looking at are, adding a new page up the top (where Site Content, Files & Images, Newsletter etc are), or is it possible to create a new page type specifically for this, and add a new tab within the "Content" tab of the page (next to Main and Meta Data maybe).

I think I've seen that this is possible, but can't for the life of me find where I read it.

Very possible. I suggest to have a thorough look at the tutorials, see
<http://doc.silverstripe.com/doku.php?id=tutorials&gt;
For instance, in the second tutorial you can see how to add a tab like you described, with the addFieldToTab thingie; in the fifth tutorial you can read how to set up relationships so that you can 'attach' your course information to pages. You'll want to create custom page types for this.

Now, I've got the courses details entered, is there a way to mod the search tutorial, so that it only searches the "Courses" information?

I'd like to have a search engine on this page, with the ability to search for the course name etc (but only show results that I've entered in the courses tab, so narrowing SQL query down to just the particular "courses" db table). Is that also possible? Any particular pointers?

Well, I would like to know that too. The problem I have is that the search function does not search the contents of the many_many relations that I've set up (whereas you want to have the search function work *only* for these specific tables)...